


Little Angels

by winnerstick



Series: Little Revolutionaries [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 01:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winnerstick/pseuds/winnerstick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Enjolras goes through his closet in preparation for college, he finds a shoebox full of pictures a five-year-old Grantaire drew him in preschool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Angels

**Author's Note:**

> we are looking past the fact that names like enjolras and grantaire would be hard for a preschooler to say because i do not want to come up with fake first names.

_“Here.”_

_Enjolras looks up from where he’s drawing his own picture to stare curiously at the messy curls. He would be looking at Grantaire’s face, but the last time Grantaire’s mommy took him to get it cut, Grantaire moved around and made the lady work so hard that she just gave up, but not before he got **three**_ _lollipops. Enjolras thought it was so smart, but in secret, because it was actually really mean and rude of him to do that. But even behind the messy hair—was that red paint in his hair? Enjolras thought they just had crayons—he can see Grantaire staring at him impatiently as he holds out a piece of paper._

_“What’s that?” Enjolras asks, looking at the paper suspiciously. Grantaire wasn’t even supposed to be there. He was supposed to be at his own table, but their teacher was too busy talking to the cook to pay attention, so there he was. Enjolras didn’t want to get in trouble with Grantaire, though! He wasn’t doing anything, just coloring his picture, like he was **supposed to**._

_“It’s for you!”_

_Enjolras waits a second, and then takes the paper from the other boy. He turns it over and looks at the picture, which looks like just a flag. The French flag, which makes Enjolras smile, because he told Grantaire yesterday all about France! And how his daddy was going there for a long time on a trip for work. Enjolras smiles at the picture, then looks up at Grantaire._

_“It’s for me?” he asks, tilting his head to the side._

_Grantaire pushes his hair out of his face, and nods with a smile that takes up almost his whole face._

_“But what about Miss Hartman?”_

_“What about her?”_

_“You’re supposed to give her the drawings!”_

_Grantaire frowns then and shakes his head. “But it’s for **you** , not her.”_

_“But the **rules** —“_

_He doesn’t finish, though, because Grantaire is walking back to his table. Enjolras was going to follow him, but he didn’t want to get in trouble from Miss Hartman for being up. So he just stuffed the picture into his backpack and went back to drawing._

\---

 

He didn’t expect the memory to come back so clearly, but as he examined the picture, it all came rushing back to him. He had been going through his closet, trying to throw away things he didn’t need—his mom had informed him that as soon as he moved out, the room would be renovated, so “For God’s sake, Enjolras, clean out that closet, or it’s all going in the garbage!”—when he stumbled upon the box. The box was only about a couple inches high, but it was filled to the brim with pictures. Most of them were stacked one on top of the other in the corner, but obviously once space there had filled up, he had resorted to folding the papers in sloppy, uneven thirds to fit into the perimeter.

 

Some were in crayon, some were in pencil, and some were even in paint. Those ones were next folded, which added to the volume of the neat stack as the wrinkles of once-wet paper created dead air in the box. Some of the pencil marks had rubbed off, some more than others, showing the excess time spent in Enjolras’s backpack as a five-year-old.

 

The pictures showed all kinds of things. There were pictures of flags, like the one he was looking at now, and pictures of animals. Even a few were clearly pictures of him, though it took him a long time to realize that. His hair was just as long, if not longer, as it was now, and still the same golden blonde. Enjolras had been teased about it, as a kid, because boys weren’t supposed to have long hair. But he kept it long, up until his mom decided she was finished with trying to tame it, and chopped it all off. Even with his ever recognizable features, it took Enjolras a moment to realize the figure was himself. Even then, Grantaire was skilled, but it was still a preschooler’s drawing.

 

\---

 

_“Here.”_

_Enjolras shakes his head and keeps on drawing. He doesn’t even look at Grantaire, which he’s sure is going to bother him. It isn’t until Grantaire pulls his hair a little that he stops drawing. He takes a minute, then looks up at Grantaire and gives him Enjolras’s best glare._

_“Don’t pull my hair! I’ll tell Miss Hartman.”_

_Grantaire pouts and puts his fist on his hip. “I wanna give you a drawing!”_

_Enjolras shakes his head again and goes back to drawing, and this time Grantaire’s pull is harder._

_“I said don’t pull my hair!” his voice is loud, but Miss Hartman doesn’t look up. “I don’t want your drawing!”_

_“But you said you liked my drawings!”_

_“That was before.”_

_Enjolras almost thinks he’s gotten away with it and goes back to drawing his own picture, but Grantaire pulls out the chair next to him—Combeferre is sick today, and Enjolras hasn’t had anyone to talk to all day because they moved Courfeyrac to Jehan’s table, and now Enjolras can’t even get Courfeyrac to look at him because he’s too busy talking to Jehan!—and sits down. Enjolras looks up and his mouth drops wide with surprise._

_“Before what?”_

_“That’s not your seat!”_

_“Combeferre isn’t here. I wanna draw here. You have better crayons.”_

_“You’re not supposed to sit there! I’m telling!”_

_“And you’re supposed to be coloring, not talking to me!”_

_Enjolras closes his mouth and thinks about this for a second, then looks down at his paper and starts coloring his picture again. But before he can get his green crayon on the paper to finish the grass, Grantaire puts another paper over it, and Enjolras almost colors on that one on accident._

_“Look, I drew you a sun.”_

_It’s really pretty, it is, and Enjolras wants to take it, but he **can’t**. Because he isn’t supposed to have it. That is supposed to go home with Grantaire to Grantaire’s mommy, not to Enjolras’ house._

_“You’re supposed to give that to Miss Hartman, Grantaire.”_

_“But I want to give it to you. It’s yours.”_

_“My mommy says I don’t have room for more pictures.”_

_“It’s not for your mommy, either. It’s for **you**.”_

_Enjolras waits a second, and then looks up at Miss Hartman. She’s busy talking to Joly, looking at him with mad eyes, probably because he was telling her about his head hurting again. Last week Joly told Enjolras he had little pox and was going to die, but this week Miss Hartman told them all that none of them had the pox. So maybe he wasn’t going to die. That was good, because Enjolras let Joly borrow his doctor set, and he had to get that back before his mommy found out. But Miss Hartman looked busy, so he picked up the drawing, put it in his folder, and nodded at Grantaire._

_“Thank you for the drawing.”_

_\---_

Enjolras spent probably a good half hour looking at the pictures, then dug further and found other memorabilia from his time in his private pre-kindergarten. There were pictures, so many pictures, of him and all of his friends, minus Cosette and Eponine, who came into the picture later on. Cosette was in their class, according to a class photo where they were all smiling, but his teacher just looked exhausted behind that plastered-on grin. Combeferre was in a lot of them, squinting in the ones at the beginning of the year, later featuring the biggest horn-rimmed glasses Enjolras had ever seen on a child. Courfeyrac sported a different scar in every picture. In one, he had a scabbed-over elbow, in another a Band-Aid covered his chin, and the other pictures sported similar injuries.

 

But in every picture he was in, Grantaire dominated the frame. His hair was unruly and messy and often had paint or syrup in it, but it wasn’t as if the preschooler cared. He was always grinning, showing off the gap in his tooth that Grantaire’s mother always feared would _never_ close up, and crooked teeth that he later had to get braces for. Every shirt he wore had a stain or a rip, and Enjolras could remember Grantaire’s mother making him promise every day while dropping him off that he would _try_ to keep this one clean. But then one thing would lead to another, and soon enough Grantaire would be covered in paint as he tried to create a likeness of Miss Hartman’s parrot that she sometimes brought in to delight her students. Or he would have spaghetti sauce down his front after he and Bahorel created catapults out of their spoons, the fun quickly ending when they accidentally hit a girl named Loretta in the back of the head and she wailed about her ribbons getting dirty.

 

He dominated the picture, and he was always around Enjolras, who had few pictures where he was smiling enough to show his teeth. He looked focused, intent on the camera or whoever was holding it, and didn’t seem to have time, even as a preschool kid, to come up with a funny face or pose. The closest he had to an attempt at a funny pose was the picture where Grantaire dumped water on his head at field day, and the camera caught him with wide eyes and an open mouth as the first wave splashed on him.

 

\---

 

_“What are you doing under here?” Grantaire asks, hanging by one arm from the side of the slide._

_Enjolras looks at him for a moment, then buries his face back in his knees and shakes his head. Before, his hair would have hid his face, so Grantaire wouldn’t see his tears, but now it is cropped short and spiked on top of his head, so his arms can barely hide his red face. Grantaire sees this, and takes a seat next to Enjolras in the woodchips and swings an arm around Enjolras’ shoulder._

_“What’s wrong?” he asks, leaning his head in and keeping his voice low. “Why are you crying?”_

_“I’m not **crying** ,” Enjolras claims, and he keeps his face hidden so Grantaire doesn’t call him a liar. “I’m not a baby.”_

_“You’re not a baby. Big boys can cry, too. My mommy said so.”_

_“My mommy said to stop. Only babies cry about their hair.”_

_“So that’s why you’re crying? ‘Cause your hair is short?”_

_Enjolras shakes his head yes, rocking his whole body as Grantaire hums next to him, a lot like Grantaire’s mommy does before she tells Enjolras “you know what I think?”_

_“You know what I think?” Grantaire asks, and Enjolras smiles and looks up long enough to shake his head no. “I think your hair looked nice before. But it looks nice now, too. ‘Cause you always look nice. And… and it’ll grow back.”_

_“But it’ll take a **long** time for it to grow back.”_

_Grantaire shrugs his shoulders up and down. “You’re not goin’ anywhere. You can wait for it to grow back. And I’ll bet it’ll look even nicer.”_

_They stay there, hidden under the slide, until recess is over. Grantaire makes Enjolras smile, even when Miss Hartman gets mad at them for not lining up. He loses the smile when Miss Hartman tells his mommy, but he feels better about his hair anyway. Because Grantaire likes it, and it’ll grow back. And then he’ll be bigger, and tell his mommy no._

\---

 

Enjolras was staring at a picture of himself and Grantaire when he picks up his phone and dials the dark-haired boy’s number. In the picture, Enjolras, with his hair cut short, is holding a picture Grantaire drew of Enjolras with long hair and a smiling face. Next to Enjolras, Grantaire is beaming at the camera, and one hand is on top of Enjolras’s head, probably ruffling what little is left of his hair. It’s the same picture that was sitting at the top of the pile in the box, and the very last picture Grantaire drew for Enjolras, as it was the last day of school before the summer.

 

Grantaire picked up on the third ring, and he could hear the grin in Grantaire’s voice as he teased him. “I thought you were going to be busy packing _all day_ and I shouldn’t call you because I’d just distract you.”

 

“Why did you stop drawing me pictures?”

 

Grantaire paused for a moment, then laughed. “Am I missing something? I draw for you all the time.”

 

“Those are doodles on the side of your notes that you pass to me sometimes. I mean actual pictures, just for me. I have a whole box full of the ones you drew me in preschool.”

 

“I thought you forgot about those.”

 

“I did, but I found the box, and, _jeez_ , Grantaire, you drew a lot for me. When did that stop?” Enjolras placed the phone on his shoulder and tried to balance it as he continued to go through his boxes.

 

“Probably after that year. I could draw you more, you know. If you really wanted me to.”

 

“I really want you to.”

**Author's Note:**

> hi you should follow me on tumblr freefras.tumblr.com also yes i change my url a lot sorry


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